1. Server Check.in
Case Study by Jeff Geerling

2. Jeff Geerling
• jeffgeerling.com / geerlingguy
• Senior Application Developer, Mercy
• Owner, Midwestern Mac, LLC

3. Agenda
• About the service
• How Drupal is used
• How Node.js is used
• Notes on Hosting and Marketing
• Q&A

4. Why build another uptime monitor?

5. Server Check.in
• Dogfood project
• Simple, cheap, reliable service
• Notify me when my servers are down
• Launched December, 2012
https://servercheck.in
@servercheckin

6. Demo

7. External Services
• Twilio
• Stripe
• Disqus

8. External Services
• Twilio
• Stripe
• Disqus
(for sms notifications)

9. External Services
• Twilio
• Stripe
• Disqus
(for sms notifications)
(for payment processing)

10. External Services
• Twilio
• Stripe
• Disqus
(for sms notifications)
(for payment processing)
(for comments)

11. External Code/Libraries
• Flot (jQuery graphing library)
!
!
• MailChimp email templates
!

12. And, of course…

13. And, of course…

14. Drupal Notes
• Custom theme (with parent “MM base” theme)
• Four custom modules:
• base
• billing
• notifications
• check server management

15. Modules
• Views
• Elysia Cron
• Disqus
• Boost
• Honeypot

16. Modules
• Views
• Elysia Cron
• Disqus
• Boost
• Honeypot
(for content listings)

17. Modules
• Views
• Elysia Cron
• Disqus
• Boost
• Honeypot
(for content listings)
(for periodic tasks and scalability)

18. Modules
• Views
• Elysia Cron
• Disqus
• Boost
• Honeypot
(for content listings)
(for periodic tasks and scalability)
(for easy comment moderation)

19. Modules
• Views
• Elysia Cron
• Disqus
• Boost
• Honeypot
(for content listings)
(for periodic tasks and scalability)
(for easy comment moderation)
(for scalability)

20. Modules
• Views
• Elysia Cron
• Disqus
• Boost
• Honeypot
(for content listings)
(for periodic tasks and scalability)
(for easy comment moderation)
(for scalability)
(because I hate spam)

21. Server Checking
• Originally: Drupal’s Queue API + cron batch
• Problems:
• Wasn’t scaling with growth
• Servers were being checked one by one
• 10 min interval maximum

22. Server Checking
Source: https://servercheck.in/blog/moving-functionality-nodejs-increased-server

23. Server Checking
• Now: External Node.js application
• Allows:
• Scalability, geographically-diverse checking
• Servers are checked asynchronously
• 1 minute check intervals for everyone (yay!)

25. Hosting on the Cheap
• Cheap “Low End Box” servers (~$15/year VPS)
• Infrastructure managed with Ansible
• (aside: check out Ansible for DevOps)
• Cheap service + cheap servers + frequent
changes == 99.9% uptime?
• (testing + automation == reliability)

26. Launch / Marketing
• Some things I’ve tried:
• Drupal.org case study
• Hacker News post
• Sponsoring blogs
• Blogging (servercheck.in/blog)
• Keep trying new things!

27. Summary
• Drupal is great for user-centric apps (and
integrates with almost anything)
• Sometimes, Drupal/PHP gets in the way (use the
right tool for the job)
• You can do a lot with a little (hosting and
marketing)

28. Questions
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